re: I believe football is dying.

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every game is on tv

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it's more than just tv. it's millennials. they're just not as fanatical about it. even when they're at the game, they're keeping an eye on social media. when they can't do that, they leave

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The bama and SEC dynasty are bad for college football

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this really is true. it's making cfb so parochial. almost like hockey and baseball. most people outside the deep south see elite cfb as a "southern" regional thing. they have more of a passing fancy with the sport/their fave team.

my f.i.l. has kids in utah/byu country. they are astounded that you can't just drive up to an lsu game 30 mins prior. it's an all day affair.

I can watch multiple games comfortably, get endless tailgate food, drink alcohol, and be with friends for ~$25/game for me and Wife

Or I can spend >$200/game on tickets where I'm packed in like a sardine, shitty stadium food, and not near friends



People wonder why attendance is down.

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I can watch multiple games comfortably, get endless tailgate food, drink alcohol, and be with friends for ~$25/game for me and Wife

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i love doing this 2 or 3 times during fb season. i can get my setup so that i'm watching up to 6, 7 games simultaneously, which is nearly heaven for me.

however, there is absolutely no substitute for being there, in person, live. tv will never approximate that. and that in and of itself continues to fascinate me

Saban is killing college football. It's just not much fun when one team dominates the way Bama does now.

It would be pretty ironic if fandom shifted from football to soccer due to fear of head trauma. Some of the first studies to point out the long term effects of blows to the head were done on soccer players.

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You also left out the shrinking of ESPN via cordcutting + a la carte programming.

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This definitely hurts college football, but how bad is it really for the NFL? ESPN gets one game a week. Most NFL games come on CBS or NBC and can be picked up OTA.

But if you're right about cord cutting, I can definitely see it happening. I had no idea how liberating it would be to cut the cord. I worried about missing shows. Missing games.

I barely miss anything and pay much less money. When I don't have the ability to watch something, I actually don't care. In fact, I'm finding myself becoming less and less interested in watching any kind of TV.

I think the OP has several good points and that the NFL (and college football) need to be address some of these concerns.

1. Falling attendance: this is a real concern. Not only do ticket prices keep increasing, but in a world that is constantly becoming more fast paced it is sometimes difficult to justify the time it takes to attend a football game. Add in the fact that everyone has a huge TV and almost all of the games are covered on television, and this is a big issue that I think will continue.

2. CTE is a major medical problem and it hurts football in at least two ways. First some people won't want to watch a game that damages the participants, and second more and more people will be reluctant to play if they know the health risks.

3. OP didn't mention the number of cord cutters, but the economics of football will probably need to be scaled back b/c TV is not going to be able to generate the type of money it has in the past.

But, on the other hand, football (especially the NFL but also college) is still insanely popular and commands huge audiences on TV. American love watching football and it has a huge lead on all other sports, so it has time to figure out the issues.

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I believe football is dying.

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If one team wins the recruiting championship 7 years running, what do you think is going to happen?

People are just tired of watching one team win it all every year. Not to mention it's all due to massive cheating, but thats a point of pride now.

People lose interest and I don't blame them. Why in the hell would a (insert non p5 team) fan watch football when Bama is loaded with elite players that don't even make it on the field? It's all rigged and it's ALL about money.

You all that actually joined the conversation instead of bashing me made some great points as well.

By dying, I meant football is on the decline and will eventually die (or evolve into something else).

The point about the cord cutting is an interesting one. With basically every game being viewable online now, the big fans that used to attend games now just stay at home. Why spend so much time tailgating, attending a 4 hour game in the 95 degree heat when you can have a viewing party at a house in the AC and watch it in HD?

The millennials are certainly a huge problem to this. They care more about what's on social media as someone pointed out. They generally don't care for sports at all as a whole. They lack connection to anything real in life basically. If it's not on their phone or iPad, they don't care.

CTE is a big issue in most sports. But when it's every play in football where your brain gets jostled, I think that's why it's more glaring in football. It's an issue that could end the sport as we know it much sooner than anything.

Fandom overall has certainly declined. I know Bama fans that could not care less about other teams, when they used to watch other games. Why is that? The interest level has certainly dropped IMO.

Good convo fellas. Now we should try and see how the institutions can fix it.